There is provided a protective layer thermal transfer sheet which can impart an excellent matte tone to an image, produced by a sublimation dye thermal transfer method, without the need to additionally provide any special step and without deteriorating high definition and high sharpness of images inherent in sublimation dye transferred images. There are also provided a protective layer thermal transfer sheet for controlling the gloss of an image, and a matted print produced using the protective layer thermal transfer sheet. The protective layer thermal transfer sheet comprises a substrate sheet and, stacked on at least a part of one side of the substrate sheet in the following order, a release layer, a protective layer and optionally an adhesive layer. The release layer contains a filler and has a roughened surface.